For anyone who knows anything about Holmes and Watson, let alone people who love the characters and Doyle's stories, this film is a form of cruel and unusual punishment. It should be an embarrassment to everyone involved in the project. "Holmes" fails to observe, fails to deduce based upon observations, and acts impulsively, irrationally, incompetently and dishonorably -- none of which the "real" Sherlock Holmes would have ever dreamt of doing, at any age. D'Onofrio's performance as Moriarty is an embarrassing cardboard cut-out composed of nothing more than a collection of cliché "villainous gestures." Theakston's nauseatingly excessive directorial style ranges from the lurid to the hallucinogenic. The screenplay brings absolutely nothing new or imaginative to the Holmes legend: throwing in a bit of arbitrary and implausible sex does not constitute a flash of imaginative genius -- it's just another crass attempt to "sex up" a movie and insults the audience members' intelligence. Avoid this horrible mess. Watch Billy Wilder's "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" or any of Jeremy Brett's early Holmes outings -- "The Sign of Four," for example -- instead.
